Tadej Pogačar leads the race with Jonas Vingegaard Hansen following. New Straits Times
The 2024 Tour De France (TDF), the largest of the three grand cycling tours, started on June 29 and ended on July 21. The grand tour, broken up into stages with different terrain profiles from flat city streets to winding mountain roads, held over a hundred riders on twenty-two teams competing to get the lowest cumulative time and win the general classification (GC). The leader of the GC heads the race in the iconic yellow jersey, or “maillot jaune.” While the TDF is always full of unforgettable moments, the 2024 TDF had many notable and historic moments. Many fans watched this year’s tour with anticipation, following the two-time TDF winner Jonas Vingegaard Hansen’s nearly fatal crash in April that left him hospitalized with a fractured collarbone, several fractured ribs, and a punctured and collapsed lung. While Vingegaard Hansen recovered, the directeur sportifs for Vingegaard Hansen’s team kept the rider’s TDF plans close to their chests. After months of rehabilitation, Vingegaard Hansen announced that he planned on starting the 2024 TDF.
Vingegaard Hansen was not the only surprising competitor in this year’s lineup. British sprinter Mark Cavendish announced his return to the race. Cavendish had won his thirty-fourth stage win in the 2023 TDF, officially tying with seventy-nine-year-old Belgian cyclist Eddy Merckx for the record of most stage wins in the TDF. Cavendish, who has been competitively racing since 2006, postponed his retirement for another year to try to finally claim his thirty-fifth stage win. Team EF Education-Easypost’s leader Richard Carapaz also returned to the race after crashing out of the 2023 TDF on the first leg.
The early favorite was Slovenian cyclist Tadej Pogačar, winner of both the 2020 and 2021 TDF, as well as the 2024 Giro d’Italia. Pogačar and Vingegaard Hansen’s rivalry has been one of the greatest throughout cycling history. The pair have swapped second and first place on the podium ever since Vingegaard Hansen started competing in the TDF in 2021. With Vingegaard Hansen recovering from his crash, Pogačar was favored as the likely winner of the tour.
The predictions of many seemed to be true, as Pogačar moved into the yellow jersey only after the second stage of the entire tour. Stage three, however, saw a victory by sprinter Biniam Girmay, officially making him the first Black African to ever win a stage in the TDF. Ultimately, Carapaz took the yellow jersey and became the Tour’s first-ever Ecuadorian leader. Carapaz’s time at the top of the GC was short-lived, as Pogačar managed to reclaim the yellow jersey at the end of the next stage. Stage five saw no changes to the GC, but was historic nonetheless, as Cavendish secured his thirty-fifth stage win, finally breaking the record he shared with Merckx since 2021.
Pogačar continued to hold onto the yellow for the next several stages, and Vingegaard Hansen seemed to be unable to match him. Then, after a show-stopping ride on stage eleven where he managed to make up 31.6 km on Pogačar, Vingegaard Hansen narrowly managed to pull off a stage win only ninety-eight days after his nearly fatal crash. “This win means a lot to me […] Everything I went through in the past few months is now coming back. The period after my crash in Itzulia Basque Country was tough. It’s a victory for my family. They have always been by my side,” a tearful Vingegaard Hansen explained after the race. Pogačar cited Vingegaard Hansen’s win as evidence that his competitor had recovered his health and strength.
Despite his picture-perfect win on stage eleven, Vingegaard Hansen was unable to take the yellow jersey away from Pogačar, who managed to further extend his lead in the GC. He managed to win six stages and wear the yellow jersey for an impressive nineteen of the twenty-one TDF stages. Pogačar was announced the winner of the 2024 TDF, boasting a lead of one minute and three seconds over Vingegaard Hansen in second place. “I cannot describe how happy I am after two hard years in the Tour de France,” Pogačar said after his victory. “This year everything [went] to perfection, I’m out of words.” Vingegaard Hansen was also happy with his placement in the tour and shared his hopes to return to the top of the podium. “Under normal circumstances, I would be disappointed with my Tour de France. But, after everything I’ve gone through, I can’t be disappointed… Even if I feel proud of what we achieved this year, I’m looking forward to [coming] back.”